Henrique de Castro, fired in January as Yahoo's chief operating officer, was paid handsomely for his largely unsuccessful efforts to turn around the company's advertising business.

For his 15 months on the job, he received about $96 million in compensation, according to the proxy statement that Yahoo filed this week.

The largest portion of the payout, $58 million, was severance, linked to the rise in Yahoo's stock price during the time he was employed.

De Castro, a former Google executive, was also awarded $11 million in salary and stock-based compensation in 2013 and $39 million in 2012, according to the proxy, although he lost a large chunk of it because the stock wasn't fully vested when he left.

CEO Marissa Mayer didn't make out nearly so well, according to the documents. For 2012 and 2013, she received $62 million in compensation, although she is also sitting on millions of shares and options that will vest over time or would pay off if she were to meet a similar fate as her former No. 2.

Yahoo's board of directors - which, like all boards, is supposed to justify its decisions on executive payouts to the company's shareholders - said that de Castro's diamond-crusted golden parachute would not have been quite so valuable if Yahoo's stock had not been on a tear during his tenure. If the stock had gone nowhere, the severance would have been worth $17 million, the company said. There was no word on how much of that stock price increase the board attributed to de Castro's work, as opposed to the rising value of Yahoo's investment in Alibaba.

The Sunnyvale company did signal that it is trying to start a fresh chapter, nominating three new board members: David Filo, a Yahoo founder who still advises it on technical matters; Charles Schwab, founder and chairman of the San Francisco discount brokerage firm; and H. Lee Scott Jr., former CEO of Walmart.

Directors receive annual cash retainers of $80,000 and an annual grant of restricted stock worth about $220,000, with additional payments for leading committees or taking on other responsibilities.

Filo, who owns 71 million shares of Yahoo worth about $2.6 billion, is earning only $1 a year and no stock for his services, according to the proxy.